Justin Hartley as Kevin Pearson, Sterling K. Brown as Randall Pearson on “This Is Us.”(Photo: Ron Batzdorff/NBC)

Spoiler alert! The following contains spoilers from Season 3, Episode 2 of “This Is Us,” “A Philadelphia Story.”

Things are tense for the Pearsons.

They were tense in the past and they’re tense in the present. Things are not tense, however, for William (special and always welcome guest star Ron Cephas Jones). William is a big, beautiful ball of light in the dark hours of “This Is Us.” 

Tuesday’s episode of the family drama focused mostly on the darkest period in the Pearsons’ lives, the aftermath of Jack’s (Milo Ventimiglia) death in the ’90s, and the challenges of the present, with a little bit of vintage William mixed in for fun. 

The flashbacks served mostly to show how much the issues of the Big Three and Rebecca (Mandy Moore) stem directly from Jack’s death, from Kevin’s (Justin Hartley) substance abuse to Kate’s (Chrissy Metz) weight to Randall’s (Sterling K. Brown) rash decision-making to Rebecca’s bad relationship with Kate and Kevin.

The family is living in temporary housing while they look for a new place, and everyone is having a tough time. Rebecca is a shell of her former self, hearing Jack as she goes through her day and unable to engage with her kids. Kevin is taking out his grief for his father and the football career he lost by binge-drinking, and he shows up completely wasted to meet with a Realtor. Kate is binge-eating, and self-sabotages her admission to Berklee College of Music. 

Randall, of course, thinks it’s his responsibility to keep the family together. Even though he got into Howard University, his dream school, he can’t help but lecture his mom and siblings rather than celebrate himself. And when it comes down to it, he can’t extricate himself from their lives. He turns down the spot at Howard to stay closer to home, which in retrospect feels like such an adult-Randall move that I can’t believe I was shocked. 

In the present, rash Randall is trying to help Deja, who is having trouble adjusting to her majority-white new school and misses friends from her old neighborhood. Randall takes her to William’s building in Philadelphia to meet a girl who’s her age. While he’s there he sees that the rec center his tenants use is in disrepair, so he seeks out the city councilman responsible for the neighborhood to try to fix it. He talks a good talk, but the maintenance crew the councilman promises never shows up. Randall is taken to task by one of the tenants, who in the flashback we saw was a good friend of William’s, for trying to fix the neighborhood instead of trying to be a part of it. 

Things aren’t going any better for Kate and Toby (Chris Sullivan). Last week, we saw that Toby went off his antidepressants cold turkey and the withdrawal isn’t pretty. He’s having deep mood swings and anxiety and taking it out on the world. On the way to Kevin’s big premiere, Rebecca finds out the couple is trying IVF and gets in a big fight with Kate. Toby blows up at his mother-in-law and then disappears for hours. 

Eventually Rebecca gets over her fears about Kate undergoing the fertility treatments, saying it’s leftover anxiety from when Jack died. She helps Kate with one of her hormone shots and the pair both take the blame for Kate’s weight gain after Jack’s death, in a truly cringe-inducing turn. The show has always been quite cliched when it comes to talking about Kate’s body and health, but the un-nuanced scenes of teen Kate stuffing her face recall this summer’s vile “Insatiable” on Netflix.

Chrissy Metz as Kate Pearson, Chris Sullivan as Toby on “This Is Us.” (Photo: Ron Batzdorff/NBC)

It is, however, one of the few times we actually see Rebecca and Kate’s relationship implode, as opposed to just hearing about it. Rebecca is so laser-focused on her own concerns she doesn’t see the pain she’s inflicting on Kate. Despite the bad writing, Moore and Metz do a great job in the scene, finally adding the layers to that relationship that have been missing. 

Kevin is, for once, the most stable of the three siblings, mostly just figuring out exactly how to define his relationship with Zoe, who wants to keep things casual. It’s clear Kevin wants a little more and maybe after skipping his premiere and regretting it, Zoe is ready for a little more, too. 

Kevin’s big mistake is, of course, when he recounts the fight to Randall, telling him that Kate said that she was the “only one” who could pass on their Dad. Randall is clearly deeply, deeply hurt by that comment, especially as he’s having a crisis about where he fits in. The woman at William’s building said he wasn’t one of them, and now his sister essentially said he wasn’t a real member of his family. 

Can’t we have just one Pearson family gathering in peace? No, of course not. If we did, it wouldn’t be “This Is Us.”

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